Egan: I wanted her to live. Jo Hopkins was made of braver stuff

It was an honour to be asked to tell the life story of Josephine “Jo” Hopkins, who, with eyes wide open, bravely wrote her own ending.

What I didn’t anticipate, was its power to invade. The more I came to know Hopkins, the more I wanted her to live, not volunteer to die. Must it end this way?

I saw my own mother pass on Oct. 6, holding her hand as she fought for her last breath. We swabbed Dad’s dry mouth with bits of water on his death bed in 2012. In between, after full, vibrant lives, my in-laws passed within seven weeks of each other, knocking away another part of our foundation.

Of course the end is a hard thing to suffer. This natural desire for longevity — and to cling to loved ones — is no doubt an important part of the debate over medically assisted death, probably why it took so long to become legal in this country. Life is good, death is bad — what could be more fundamental?

Think of it: Are not our daily habits — food, exercise, risk-avoidance, rest, health care — all tied to the self-evident idea that it is best to live as well, but also as long, as possible?

So the Hopkins family teaches us something.

Hopkins agreed to tell the Citizen her story, on condition it be published after her death. She met with us twice, for a total of about three hours, accompanied by her son, William, one of four children.

We found her delightful. Photographer Julie Oliver and I were struck by how lucid and clear-headed she was, how sometimes comical, how courageous, how engaged, how oddly pain-free she appeared to be, nothing like a woman preparing to die. Honestly, it left us troubled, maybe like the dilemma hitting kitchen tables across the country.

Josephine Hopkins with her sone William Hopkins.Julie Oliver /
Postmedia

William, an insurance investigator, and his wife Emily, could not have been more open and helpful to the Citizen.

He supports his mother’s decision to seek a physician to assist with her death and believes we need to spread awareness about this option for the terminally ill. Indeed, it was front and centre in Jo’s published death notice.

“It was her decision and I respect that,” he said one day in July, after pushing his mother’s wheelchair across a city park.

“Quality of life is more important that quantity. To see someone you obviously love and care about in a deteriorating, unfortunate, sad situation that is only going to get worse,” he argued, “until she is helpless lying in a bed, that’s not the life I want for her.

“I hope I have the guts to do the same.”

Jo’s daughter wrestled with the question. In the months leading to the chosen date of Aug. 7, she said she queried her mother about whether things should be delayed. Her mother’s mind, after all, was still sharp and she could still read and attend family functions.

Look at Stephen Hawking, the renowned but disabled physicist, she remembers saying. Was he not still contributing — leading a valuable life — though in a diminished physical state?

But her mother could not be persuaded. “She just said no.”

They spoke of this again about a week before her death, the daughter said. Why not delay till the fall, for instance, enjoy the rest of the summer?

“I would go tomorrow if I could,” her daughter recalled her mother’s answer. ”It was a feeling of being in control that she hadn’t had for a long time. She was taking charge.”

And, in the end, there is the heart of it, perhaps: an individual’s ability to take control of the course of a fatal disease that has bulldozed your life. You win, in the end, by calling the final shot.

Knowing the date of one’s death crystallizes things. William told the mourners it gave the family time to go over family history — the good, bad and funny — and say important things that had gone unspoken.

“Most importantly,” he said. “I had the opportunity to tell her what a great mother she had been and how much I really appreciated how hard she had worked for us. Up until then, I had never done so.”

Her grandson Jack, 20, a journalism student, said knowing the date of death was “mind-blowing in a way” but he supported his grandmother’s decision.

“People tend to think that the scariest thing you can think of is your impending death. But this shifted my thinking. My own death is not the scariest thing because I know it will happen.

“But rather, how I will die? That, potentially, is the scariest thing.”

On Aug. 7, a Monday, I was cutting the grass at the cottage when I stopped to look at my watch: 2:45 in the afternoon. My new pal, Jo, would be gone by now, surely. And she was.

I’ve thought of Jo and my mother together and they merge in this vein: When you get old and sick, the medical establishment does not do everything in its power to keep you alive. We only think so. They tried the best antibiotics on Mom’s pneumonia, the result of serious heart disease, but the drugs failed. There would be no ICU or life support. She did not want that. On her final day, I think she arrived at acceptance.

They made her “comfortable” and she slipped away. Was this not, in a way, a physician-assisted death? So maybe these are not opposite ways of dying, after all, maybe just different shades of the same thing. Like driving a bus or being a passenger — both going to the same place.

Josephine Hopkins was too head-strong in life to let a little thing like death get in the way — which for me, and maybe many others, is a powerful, illuminating way of thinking about the arrow of our lives.

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